Best of 2017

I thought I’d take this still wintry week to review some of my favorite plants of 2017. These are plants I love for their flowers, their pretty foliage, or their shape or texture. They’re easy to grow. Some but not all are native plants with the added advantage of providing food and shelter for native animals, especially insects.

     Bloodroot (Sanguinaria canadensis) is an early bloomer, a native plant classified as a spring ephemeral. It first sends up elegant curled gray-green irregularly indented leaves. 

Bloodroot unfurling in April

The glowing white flowers last for two weeks if the weather stays cool. Bloodroot confirms that spring is really coming.

     White bleeding heart (Dicentra [now Lamprocapnos] spectabilis ‘Alba’, flowering soon after bloodroot, is one of my long-time favorites. I bought some from White Flower Farm years ago as a concession to gardening in shade. I find the flowers unfailingly beautiful. 

White bleeding heart in May

It’s a self-seeder that pops up in shady spots and forms new colonies. If there are more seedlings than I want to keep, I pot them and give them away. There are native bleeding hearts, but this isn’t one of them.

     For summer, there’s borage (Borago officinalis). This persistent self-seeder, originally from Europe, has furry leaves and azure blue flowers. 

Borage volunteering in the vegetable garden

I first planted it in my vegetable bed because it was listed as a beneficial plant. It’s come up every year since. Its specific epithet officinalis indicates that it was once used by apothecaries as a medicine. Borage is popular with pollinators, easy and vigorous but not pushy.

     Recently I’ve been very pleased with parsley, dill and fennel I’ve planted for pollinators. The only one we eat much of is the parsley, but all three grow tall fronds and panicles of flowers that bees and other insects like. I think they look romantic in a corner of the vegetable bed.

Fennel flowers for pollinators

     Among shrubs, one of my all-time favorites is doublefile viburnum (Viburnum plicatum f. tomentosum ‘Mariesii’). It’s not a native, but May wouldn’t be the same without it. The graceful white flowers open along the tops of horizontal branches.

Doublefile viburnum in May

     I think our native highbush blueberries (Vaccinium corymbosum) are underused as ornamental plants. They could easily take the place of privet, a nonnative that turns out to be invasive. I’ve got several blueberry shrubs mixed into shady beds. The spring flowers are pretty, the berries are popular with birds, and the red fall foliage is very handsome. 

Blueberries' fall color

I’m going to prune them this spring in hopes they can grow more densely in areas where I’ve let in more light.

     One of my favorite trees is white pine (Pinus strobus), a New England native that makes a feathery background for several of my garden prospects. 

White pine in the background

White pines lose limbs to heavy winds and heavy snow. Fortunately they just keep growing; the gaps are soon filled in.

     Most of these favorites aren’t new in my garden. They’ve stood the test of time. It’ll be interesting to see whether new additions will prove to be even better garden citizens.

A March favorite, witch hazel